Jack stood in a little alcove in the hall, looking around as though he didn’t understand what he was looking at. The colors of reality had changed on him, I knew, shifting to the odd ultraviolet light of the spirit realm. The feeling of reality had changed on him too. And his body, full of holes and short on blood, lay on the bed upstairs where the guys had moved it. I wasn’t sure if he knew he was dead.

My heart broke all over again. I’d helped Mordecai fight his way back to life, but I couldn’t help Jack. Not by the time I’d finished with Mordecai.

“You couldn’t have done anything for him even if you’d gotten to him first,” the cat said from beside me, his tone respectfully somber.

“Can you read minds, too?” I asked as the others drifted away, giving me space. They trusted me to help their brother in arms. Only Kieran had stayed, both because he could see Jack and, knowing him, because he felt responsible for Jack’s death. He watched with glassy eyes, sorrow written plainly on his face and dripping through our links.

“Don’t need to. You show all your feelings on your face. You’re probably the world’s worst poker player.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had the money to play.”

“Well, trust me, you’d lose.”

I eyed the Line, feeling it sending out a welcoming vibe, trying to coax Jack to cross over, to get his bearings in the beyond. So far, he was resisting, but his gaze was on it. I didn’t think he’d noticed us yet.

I shook my head. “I don’t know what to do here,” I whispered. It felt good to have someone else I could talk to about this kind of thing, even if it was a possessed cat. “I could easily give him a nudge to send him over, but I’m not sure he wants to go. If he stays around here, though, it’s going to take him a while to figure everything out, and Kieran probably won’t take it well. It can be heartbreaking to watch if you’re familiar with the person.”

“You know, there hasn’t been a female Spirit Walker in…” The cat rubbed against my leg. I shook him off. A real animal was one thing, but this spirit-animal hybrid weirded me out. “Rude,” he said. He licked his leg. “A long time. Genetics got it right with you. Your empathy sets you apart. It’ll be the thing that makes you fly true, I have no doubt. Assuming you don’t end up in the wrong hands. And with your Demigod at your side, you won’t. That guy… He’s a budding powerhouse. I think genetics got it right with him, too. The Fates are at work here. Buckle up. This’ll be a good show.”

“None of that matters in this situation.”

“I know. I shouldn’t have to tell you how to do your job.”

“I mean…you’re the one that’s supposed to be training me to do my job,” I whined.

I hesitated for a moment, then slowly walked over to stand beside Jack, facing the same direction he was. I stood silently, seeing if he would notice me. When he didn’t, I said softly, “Hey, Jack.”

To my surprise, he didn’t startle. “Hey, Lexi.”

I leaned forward to look at his face, wondering how the hell he could look so confused and sound so rational. “You’ve had better days, huh?”

“I’m dead, right? I bled out before I could heal?”

Tears came to my eyes and I blinked them away. “Yeah, buddy. Did you see your body?”

“See it? I stood up out of it. I didn’t realize I’d left it behind until I tried to grab the back door handle. I couldn’t. I stood there for…” He paused. Time was already slippery for him. That part of the living world seemed to fall away almost immediately for a spirit. “I stood there, confused, while she got away.”

My heart sped up. “She got away? Who did? Was Daisy still alive?”

Jack held up a hand and turned it over, checking the back.

“You’ll get used to it,” I said, my hands shaking with the need to ask him about Daisy. But you couldn’t force the newly dead to hurry. The mind usually erased many of the details of a traumatic death, which he’d definitely had. Confusion muddied what was left. I didn’t want to make anything worse. I wanted to preserve what had survived. It was our only hope for Daisy. “Soon all this won’t feel so…different.”

“She’d been roughed up. Her face… Lexi, I think I did that. I think I did that to Daisy. Blood was…on my hands. I hurt in a lot of places—I only vaguely remember now—but I had blood on my knuckles. On the backs of my hands. And her face was… She was right next to me when I came to. Like I’d dropped her weak little body before I took a knee.” His voice quavered. “She tried to get up. She was broken, but she tried to get up…” He blinked a bunch, trying to recall memories that had been erased by trauma like ink on a whiteboard.

Kieran stepped up, faster than thought, now right in front of Jack’s face. “Tell me what you know.”

Jack blinked at Kieran, but the confusion cleared instantly. The focus of the living crept into his gaze. He was latching on to Kieran as a known quantity. The Line dimmed around us. “Sir, I can’t be sure exactly what happened. I have a big black hole in my memory. I remember waking up in your house, getting ready, and running to the door to answer your summons. Then…” His jaw set. “I…woke up, sir. It felt like it, anyway. Next thing I knew, I was…in pain, I think. Not terrible. I could get over it. I remember thinking I could heal through it. But then I saw…” He couldn’t keep that quiver of emotion from his voice. The trials of the living clung to his spirit. “Her arm was messed up. Her face. She was in so much pain. And I think—I don’t remember doing it, or even how I got to that spot—but I think I did it, sir. And I froze. I froze solid, watching her struggle to sit up. I was scared to help. I was scared to hurt her… I got myself killed and Daisy taken. I—”